


Body Locker

by DemonzDust



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Scott has lots of feelings, hurt!theo, sceo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 16:21:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11467230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonzDust/pseuds/DemonzDust
Summary: Not sure what to do when a poisoned Theo Raeken is wheeled into the emergency room and a group of strange men seem to be looking for him, Melissa McCall hides him in the morgue. When he wakes up, things become so disastrous she has to call her son for help. Set shortly after 6A.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KiwiWolf91](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwiWolf91/gifts).



> As requested by Kiwiwolf whom I adore. Also special thanks to my friend Moremartinski for all the encouragement. You guys make writing so much fun. ^_^

Theo breathes a deep sigh of relief as the last wisps of the Ghost Riders disappear, taking Douglas with them.

It’s over. He was the last remnants of the Dread Doctor’s legacy. With him gone, Theo feels light, as if there was a heavy weight lifted off his chest.

Scott’s pack is rejoicing. They’re huddled around Stiles, hugging and exchanging laughs of relief.

Theo is careful to keep his distance from that. He knows he’s not exactly one of the people Stiles is looking to hug. Or anyone is looking to hug, really.

“Okay, but seriously?” Stiles says raising his voice above the buzz of his friends. “Who is buying me a milkshake right now? I am starving and  _ extremely _ sugar deprived!”

This, of course, is met with more laughter and a several claims of “not it” as the pack makes their way out of the woods.

Trailing slightly behind them, Theo follows as well. Or at least he does - until he feels a firm hand on his arm ripping him off the trail.

“ _ Hey! _ ” Theo cries out indignantly as Scott slams his back against the rough bark of a tree. “What the hell? I  _ helped _ you!”

But the alpha wolf doesn’t relent his grip.

“ _ Twenty-four hours _ .” Scott says, staring at Theo severely. “You did help us, and for that I’m giving you twenty-four hours to get the hell out of Beacon Hills. After that I never want to see you in this town or near  _ any _ of my pack again. And so help me, Theo, if I hear down the grapevine about you hurting  _ anyone  _ else I’ll find you and put you back in the ground  _ myself _ .”

Theo swallows. He’d thought that his voluntary help through the whole Ghost Rider thing and saving Scott’s beta twice would be enough to win him some potential brownie points with him.

He apparently had thought  _ wrong _ . 

“Oh come on, Scott.” he says in an smooth friendly tone. “We’re both grown ups, right? I’m sure we can find a way to get on in the same tow-”

“I  _ mean it _ , Theo.” Scott growled, his eyes flaring red. “ _ I want you gone. _ ” 

Theo’s quiet for a moment, giving Scott a few moments to cool down.

“Look, I get that you took the whole thing that happened between us personally, but-”

“You mean that thing where you tried to turn my pack against me and then  _ killed _ me? Is that the  _ thing _ I took personally?”

As much as he’d like to continue to bust Scott’s chops and play down the severity of what he did, he  _ needs _ to be able to stay in Beacon Hills. He’d survived without a pack before, but that was when he had the Dread Doctors to protect him. He’d be a target out on his own, an omega wolf, but  _ weaker _ .

“I’m sorry.” Theo says looking him deep in the eyes. “Please...please give me a chance to prove it to you?”

“Well it’s too late.” Scott says definitely. “You’re not a part of my pack, and you  _ never will be _ . You had your chance, you threw it away. My friendship was worth nothing to you. My pack was worth nothing to you. My  _ life _ was worth nothing to you. So  _ get out _ .”

Theo's silent again. He looks down, then back up at Scott. He doesn’t say anything else but pleads his case with his eyes.

He can see hesitation flicker across Scott’s face for a moment, before it hardens again.

“Scott-” he starts, but is interrupted another time.

“Do you know what the dumbest part about all of this is, Theo?” Scott asks him. “If you had just _ told me _ what you were in. If you’d actually wanted to get away from the Dread Doctors-”

Scott’s voice gets shaky, and he has to steady himself.

“But you  _ didn’t _ .” he goes on. “You didn’t want pack, you didn’t want friendship, all you wanted was the Beast’s powers, a bunch of flunkies to boss around and then throw away, and a whole lot of other  _ crap  _ that you wouldn't even know what to do with. And for  _ what _ ?”

Scott’s grip on him is tightening and Theo can feel that the alpha wolf wants to shake him but is only just barely holding himself back from it. It’s taking everything in Theo not to flinch from the harsh truths and increasing pressure on his wrist.

“I’m sorry.” Theo says again, and this time he means it. “I’ll leave. You won’t ever have to hear from me again.”


	2. Several weeks later....

It’s nearly 3am when they wheel him in. Melissa is starting her second shift in a row and sipping her fourth cup of coffee when she recognizes the unconscious patient on the gurney being pushed into the ER. His body is covered in lacerations and Melissa thinks she sees a few bullet holes in his chest. If he hadn’t been supernatural, he’d most surely be dead. 

“I’ve got this one.” she says authoritatively to the nurse, taking control of the gurney as it’s wheeled in front of her. “I think your other patient has been calling for you.”

“You take all of the hopeless ones.” the nurse comments, his tone somewhere between relief and amusement as he withdraws. “This one’s kind of sad though...he’s awful young for this...I don’t even know what happened to him, he looks like he’s been in a war zone...doubt he’ll make it.” 

“I just like a challenge.” Melissa replies sharply. “Now let me do my job and you do yours.”

She immediately regrets her curtness when she sees his surprised and slightly hurt expression.

“Sure.” he says, pulling a hand through his dirty blond hair and looking for his clipboard. The corners of his mouth are turned down like he’s been scolded.

He’s new here. She wishes she could remember his name, and she _really_ wishes she’d been nicer, but she needs to get Theo to a private area as fast as possible. As much as she hates the little bastard that tried to kill her son, she can't risk anyone witnessing Theo's body healing itself with supernatural speed. It would just raise too many inconvenient questions.

As she wheels him into a vacant space she looks over her shoulder to check that the new guy has gone. She's both relieved and disappointed to see that her lack of tact has sent him off, tail between his legs, to see his other patients. She pulls the curtains shut around herself and Theo and wonders if her overworked, underslept curtness might be one of the reasons that her last date with Chris hadn’t gone as well as she would have liked.

She’s always tired, at her wit’s end, just trying to make sure her son--whom she’s worried is always far more concerned with taking care of others more than himself--is alright.

Her emotions can't seem to decide if she should be excited or upset that Scott will be leaving for college soon. On one hand, she’s done it, he’s been raised at least semi-healthy and well adjusted, but on the other she’s not sure she’s ready to see him move out 

She sighs, pushing all thoughts of Scott packing his bags or that terrible date with Chris out of her head to inspect Theo’s wounds.

He'd been poisoned, she can tell immediately from the discoloration around the bullet wounds and the fact that he seems to be healing quite slowly. She's not sure what poisons a chimera exactly, but she's sure it's nothing she can't handle. 

As always, her personal problems and anxieties melt to the side as she focuses on the task before her. She can worry about everything after she’s sewed this boy back together. 

Even if Theo’d probably done something to deserve however he’d gotten himself this way.

 

*     *     *

 

Thirty minutes later Melissa is pulling her rubber gloves off, congratulating herself on a job well done. Several blood-soaked bullets lay piled up on a metal tray beside her and all of Theo's wounds are clean and treated. She can see his healing slowly starting to return to it’s usual pace, the wounds visibly beginning to close on their own.

She's about to wheel him to another room for recovery when she hears several men, making their way through the ER, asking for a patient that fits Theo's description.

Peeking through the curtains, she sees them. They’re clean-shaved and wearing working-class functional clothing. One of them has a tattoo on his arm depicting some kind of cross beneath a rolled up denim sleeve, the other a stone-cold serious expression, his arms hidden from her gaze by the sleeves of his thick crisp leather jacket.

But it's the boots that give them away to Melissa.

They're covered in the same sooty grey dirt she'd just spent the better part of an hour scraping out of Theo’s cuts.

_Hunters._

Her mind jumps to immediately.

Yet again, not anything she can’t handle.

She quickly tosses a sheet over his body and wheels him to the only place she doubts he’ll be discovered.

 

*     *     *

 

The morgue is empty when Melissa arrives and she makes quick work of sliding Theo into a body locker. He’s still unconscious, but beginning to stir slightly. His eyes scrunch in pain, and a small moan slipping past his lips.

“Just stay in here and be quiet for a few minutes.” she whispers harshly, worried that he might wake soon. “It’s for your own damn good.”

She isn’t quite sure if he’d heard her, but she doesn’t hear him make any sound as she closes the door on him so she doesn’t really care. She might feel a little more concerned about the traumatic experience of potentially waking up inside a body locker if it had been _anyone_ else, but as it is, she feels Theo’s already getting more protection and effort than he deserves.

Locking him in securely, she heads back to the ER, sure that there are a number of other people waiting for her that _hadn’t_ killed their own sisters or tried to kill her son.

She isn’t even out of the morgue before she regrets her decision.

*     *     *

The first thing Theo feels as his mind slowly returns to consciousness is cold.

Cold air around him, cold metal beneath his back. He shivers as he tries to open his eyes.

He doesn’t remember how he’d fallen unconscious. To another person the experience of being abducted and tortured by a group of strange men might have been enough to make them remember the details, but to Theo, who's had dozens of such experiences in his short eighteen years of life, it hardly stands out.

When he finally manages to lift his heavy eyelids, he sees nothing.

He blinks, it’s so dark that for a moment he’s unsure if he _actually_ managed to open his eyes, and then reaches his arm up in front of him.

 _No_. He thinks suddenly as his palm comes into contact with a familiar cold flat surface.

_No, no, no, no...._

His heart slams in his chest and his hands quickly search around, banging into walls on all four sides of him.

_No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!_

He can’t be here. He can’t be back here.

It _can’t_ happen again. He can’t handle it. Not a second time.

“LET ME OUT!!!” He screams, slamming his hands into the walls confining him, his legs thrashing in every which direction.

“PLEASE?!!!” he cries, hot tears gushing from his eyes. “ _Please, please! Someone!!!_ ”

“ _I'm sorry!_ ” he chokes on the words as they tumble desperately from his mouth. 

He knows it won’t matter. Not to her. Why would it make a difference to her?

No matter how much he regrets it or how hard he tries to be better, no matter how many times he apologizes, she will still be dead and nothing he could ever do would change that.

He knows she’ll be here any moment.

There’s a deep rushing in his ears as the space around him seems to shrink smaller and smaller. The dark air becomes cramped and dense. His increasingly desperate panting reverberates off the walls making the small box hotter and hotter until suddenly he realizes that he can’t breathe at all.

 

*     *     * 

Scott’s asleep, his head beneath a pillow when he hears his phone buzz on the night stand beside him and wakes with a start.

Reaching for the phone, a cold chill runs down his spine.

It’s only a little after 4:30 in the morning. No good calls ever come between 4:30 - 7:00am.

“Mom?” he asks, trying to keep his voice even and strong for her even as his heart starts to slam in his chest.

She sounds furious as she dives into a story about hunters in the hospital and Theo inside a body locker--apparently really freaking out, but Scott knows it isn’t really anger. That’s just how his mother handles stress.

Damn it. He’d thought he'd been pretty clear when he told Theo _not to come back_.

 

“Okay, Mom. I’ll be there soon.” he assures her, his voice still measured as he pulls some fresh clothes quickly out of his dresser drawer. “Just try not to let anyone in there, okay? Not just those hunters. Theo’s dangerous...who knows where his head's at right now.”

As he grabs the keys to his bike and speeds off in the direction of the hospital, he struggles to convince himself that it’s just the notes of stress in his mother’s voice that have him rattled, and not the fact that it’s _Theo_ in danger that’s sending a solid rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

He’d promised himself that he would never trust Theo again; that he’d never _care_ about Theo again. Theo may have helped him in his fight against the Ghost Riders but that didn’t mean anything. By now he’s come to understand that Theo would do anything to help himself survive.

Work with his enemies, betray his friends, hurt people, _kill people_ , literally _anything_.

Liam had made a weak defense for Theo after the dust had settled. Citing that Theo had been a huge help in the hospital, that he’d nearly sacrificed himself to save others, but Scott didn’t buy it for a minute. Theo had proven time and time again that he’s more than capable of playing a long con.

So why would this be any different? Because he’d spent some time beneath the ground?

Scott would believe _that_ when he saw it.

Or at least that’s what he tries to tell himself.

Because if it’s true, then why does the thought of Theo getting caught by a group of hunters and killed send stabbing pains through his chest?

He sighs, shaking his head slightly as the cold night air rips through his hair as he turns sharply onto the street of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital.

He knows the reason why, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.

It’s the same reason that he knows he needs to keep Theo as far away from himself as possible.

Because despite his resolve, despite all of the reasons that he should never feel so much as a shred of empathy for Theo again, Scott can’t help but feel himself begin to melt every single time he lays his eyes on him.

Because underneath all the snark, casual cruelty, and smugness, beneath the thick jaded skin that Theo had developed, beneath the layers upon layers of lies, Scott swears he can still see small flickers of the boy he once knew in the chimera’s cold eyes.

It’s weak and small, trapped behind walls built by what Scott can only assume is the result of years of the Dread Doctor’s abuse, but it’s there. Struggling not to be extinguished, fighting for just a little bit of air to rekindle itself...

Or is that just what Theo _wants_ him to think?

As he comes to a screeching halt in the nearly-full parking lot, Scott reminds himself that he can’t think like that. Not after Theo had proven so many times that he would exploit sympathy.

He can’t let his guard down. He can’t put his pack at risk again.

He steels himself as he dismounts his bike and makes his way into the hospital and forces himself to remember all of the chances Theo’d been given and squandered. Of all of the hurt he’d caused Scott’s pack, of the raw gaping hole Theo’s betrayal had left in his heart. 

But despite all of his efforts, he isn’t prepared for the helpless screams and the frantic pleading that assaults his ears the second he reaches the floor of the morgue. It’s so desperate and broken the voice is hardly recognizable, but Scott knows it’s him.

The sound twists his insides and he sprints down the hall.

He can’t even pretend that it’s only just to shut Theo up.

Because unlike Theo, _he’s_ not good at lying...not even to himself.

*     *     *

Theo’s palm slams against the door, but it’s too strong, or he’s too weak, to break through.

He feels a pain in his chest growing larger and sharper as he gasps for air and finds none. He swipes so furiously against the unrelenting metal that his claws crack and splinter, and _still_ he can’t breathe.

And then, suddenly, there's a clicking sound and a blaring crack of light - an opening.

Theo bursts out of the locker and slams into the person on the other side of the door.

He swipes his broken claws frantically at the form he'd collided with. He doesn't know if it's Tara or someone else entirely, but he doesn't want anything touching him.

“Theo!”’ He hears the person call his name urgently as he's grabbed by his wrists but he doesn't recognize the voice.

He attempts to snatch his arms out of the person's grip, sure that at any moment there will be a hand buried in his chest.

“ _Don't_ !” He cries, squirming till he's tangled with the other person on the cold morgue floor. “ _Please...please don't_.”

“Theo, I'm not going to hurt you.” He hears and this time the voice is more familiar. It's strong and measured, like the iron-tight grip pinning him down. “It's _me_. I won't hurt you...”

 

*     *     *

 

Theo's in a worse of a state than Scott expected. 

His eyes are wild and crazed, his body swiping at him and thrashing to escape his grip. It takes no small amount of effort to keep him on the floor so he can’t run.

"Theo, _stop_ ." He implores again, struggling to get on top of the crazed and dangerous chimera. "Calm down!"  
  
But it's no good. Theo's body twists and wriggles, refusing to let Scott crawl on top of him at all costs.

Scott slips down onto his side behind him and keeping his hands clasped tight around Theo's wrists, he pulls him into a bear hug, pinning his arms down to his sides.  
  
Up close to Theo like this, the scent of the cold sweat on his neck and the vibrations Scott can feel through his back as he sobs are impossible not to be affected by. He can barely understand the nearly hysterical words tumbling out of the Theo’s mouth, but when he does they cut into the weakest parts of heart: _I’m sorry. Please don’t._

  
"It's okay." He whispers, Theo's soft hair tickling his lips as he brings his mouth to the chimera’s ear. “No one is going to hurt you. You’re safe now.” 

He can feel the strain in Theo’s lungs as he starts to hyperventilate.

“ _Breathe_.” he commands, soft but firmly in his ear. “Just _breathe_...”

 

“ _Just let me go, please_ ...” Theo lets out a choked sob. “I _sorry_...”

 

“Theo, just _breathe_.” Scott insists, slowing his own breath down. “Breath with me, just try...”

Theo doesn’t seem to hear or understand what he’s saying, but as Scott breaths long audible breathes into his ear the kicking becomes slowly less violent.

Minutes pass, and the thrashing is slowly reduced to trembling sobs.

Scott relaxes his hold on Theo, but doesn't let him go.

 

*     *     *

 

Theo’s heart is still racing, but breathing is becoming less and less painful. HIs surroundings, that he’d only seen as a blur when he first broke out begin to come slowly into focus.

The voice in his ear, instructing him to breathe is becomes more and more recognizable.

“Scott?” he eventually asks.

“Yeah.” The voice breathes. “It’s me.”

At that, Theo freezes. The voice is calm and soothing, but he’s no idiot. This could be just a game. Another delusion. Any second now “Scott” could turn on him.

He bursts into a new set to tears.

“So what now, you’re going to rip my throat out a hundred thousand times?” He accuses the phantom in defeat. “Going to show me how it felt to die like that?”

 

*     *     *

 

“Theo...” Scott says, a bit shocked at the accusation. “I’d never do that. You _know_ I wouldn’t...”

“I _don’t_ know.”

“Well then you don’t know me at all.”

“ _You put me back in the ground.”_ Theo accuses, tears streaming down his face and neck.

Scott’s mouth goes dry as he begins to piece things together.

“No.” Scott whispers, his own voice now a bit broken, as if he’s in pain. “No, I _didn’t_.”

Did Theo think he was back there?

“You’re...you’re not there. I _swear_ you’re not there.” Scott whispers.

Theo’s trembling harder now, Scott can feel his heartbeat skyrocketing and he seems just on the verge of hyperventilating again.

“Shhh...” Scott whispers in his ear. “ _No one_ is putting you back there, alright?”

 _I shouldn’t have let it happen in the first place._ Scott thinks for what feels like the thousandth time since he’d watched Theo pulled down that chasam. _I should have found another way. I should have found a way to help him._

He’d been too shocked when the ground first ripped open and the specter of Theo’s deceased sister crawled out to really respond. Yes, Theo was still a threat. Yes, Theo didn’t deserve his help.

But the way Theo had screamed and cried, the way he’d begged for Scott to intervene as he was dragged down, it had haunted Scott’s dreams for weeks afterwards. He’d woken in the dead of night on countless occasions from dreams of Theo (not the callous and vengeful eighteen-year-old Theo, but the small child Theo he’d known years ago) being dragged off to unknown tortures. Most nights he couldn’t shake the thoughts. He’d sit up on his bed, face buried in his hands, and _cry_.

It wasn’t guilt, so much as it was the sense of loss and failure.

Theo wasn’t always evil; he’d been innocent once. Scott can still remember in vivid detail Theo sitting on his porch after a hot summer afternoon they’d spent failing to perform tricks on their new skateboards. He remembers Theo’s scraped knees and how his T-shirt clung to his back with sweat as he sipped fruit punch out of a silver pouch and listened to Scott poor his heart out about his parent’s divorce.

Stiles was losing his Mom at the time, and Scott couldn’t dump his problems on him, but Theo was patient and seemed to have all of the time in the world to listen. He’d tilt his head and scrunch his face with understanding as Scott would get to the more painful bits.

_Danmit._

He _can’t_ think about Theo like that. Or he _shouldn’t_.

But the sounds that are escaping Theo’s lips make him sound young and innocent again, even if he isn’t.

Theo had gotten more and more withdrawn in the weeks before his sister’s death, but it was around the same time that  Stiles’ mother had just passed away and Scott had been too absorbed in trying to support his best friend to notice.

He didn’t see back then how Theo was changing, but when he looks back on it now, knowing what he knows, it seems so obvious that he needed help.

He’d show up at school pale and shell shocked with dark circles under his eyes. He’d get detention for things - upsetting other students, telling lies. He was jumpy and moody. He hardly talked to anyone anymore.

Other kids had started teasing him for going to counseling. Scott had never asked what the counseling was for.

Theo’d even asked Scott if he would come spend the night at his house once. He’d said there was something he wanted to show him - something that no one would believe him about.

Scott had explained he couldn’t that night. He had Stiles coming over, and Stiles needed him.

Theo hadn’t asked again.

He should have paid more attention. He should have asked if Theo was okay, which he clearly _wasn’t_.

Maybe if Theo’d had someone to talk to...maybe if just _one person_ was there for him...

 _Stop it._ Scott thinks. _Just_ stop _it. Thinking about that doesn’t do either of you any good. How could you have known what was going on?_

But the “what if’s” continue to plague him. They shout at him from every corner, they blend in with Theo’s noisy sobs, and they cut into his chest like a blade soaked with poison.

“I’m sorry.” Theo manages to get out through his tears. “I’m sorry I came back. I-I _had_ to, they had me for days...when I escaped I knew they’d catch up with me, I had nowhere else I could go...”

Scott can only assume that “they” are the hunters his mother had warned him about prowling the hospital looking for him. She’d given Scott a brief description of the state she’d found Theo in.

 _I let that happen._ Scott thinks, and his grip on Theo tightens. _I let him get tortured again._

“No.” he says, leaning his head forward so that his lips scape the back of Theo’s scalp and scrunching his eyes closed to keep the warm tears that are brimming in them from falling. “ _I’m_ sorry. I’m sorry I  told you to leave.”

He’s not sorry he told Theo to stay away from his pack, he’s not sorry that he didn’t trust Theo, but he is sorry that he turned him out so callously. That he didn’t lock Theo up and keep an eye on him. That he didn’t even open himself up to the possibility that _maybe_ Theo had changed.

“You had to.” Theo says, his voice still a trembling sputter. “I...know you couldn’t trust me...”

It’s true. Scott knows it’s true. It would have been stupid to trust him. He didn’t owe Theo a second chance when he’d proven so many times what he does with them.

But he can’t wipe the image of Theo, scared and alone, reaching out to him from his mind. He hears his words over and over again. _“Hey, do you want to come stay over to my house tonight? There’s-there’s something really weird. It’s-it’s-my parents won’t believe me. Could...would you let me show you?”_ He can’t forget the shadow that had crept over the boy’s face when he’d refused.

“ _Fuck_.” Scott whispers into Theo’s neck as the tears finally fall from his own eyes.

He knows it’s no good to go down that path. He can’t change the past, he can’t go back in time and be there for Theo. But maybe he can change things now.

Maybe Theo's willing to change, or maybe he isn't. Maybe he isn't capable of it even if he wants to. But if there's even a remote possibility of Theo being able to be rehabilitated, Scott can't help himself from wanting to give him the chance.

“You don’t have to leave.” Scott finally whispers, and he turns Theo around to face him. “Okay? You can stay here...”

He can’t help himself, his hand moves to Theo’s chaffed wet cheek and his thumb is brushes away the tears underneath his eyes as the rest of his fingers slip underneath his chin to protectively holding his gaze.

Theo’s eyes are clearer now. Still crazed and scared, but the cloudiness is gone and it’s replaced with a cautious unsureness - like he’s struggling to believe what he’s hearing.

It only makes Scott want to pull him closer.

“As long as you’re not hurting anyone,” Scott goes on. “I won't let anyone hurt you. You’re safe with me, I _swear_.”

Theo bites his lip, he stares at Scott for several moments.

 

*     *     *

Chris isn’t answering his phone. It rings and it rings and it rings until his voicemail picks up and Melissa is left leaving scrambled messages about hunters and her son trying to calm theo down in the morgue.

Great. It’s just what she wanted to do, look like an ass in front of the man she was trying to date.

 _Whatever._ She sighs and rolls her eyes at herself as she ends the call. It wasn’t the first time she’d done something like that and it probably wasn’t going to be the last either.

She’s leaving the empty restroom when she notices something off.

There’s a man standing by the chairs in the hall. He looks as if he’s waiting to see someone in one of the adjacent rooms. He was there when she went into the restroom, and he hasn’t moved at all since. It shouldn’t be that odd.

But Melissa knows that there _are no_ patients in the adjacent rooms. The last one had been moved this morning because the air conditioning had given out in this section and it was uncomfortably hot.

So why is the man wearing a long black coat?

A chill runs up her spine as she realizes that there may be more than the few hunter’s she’d initially seen. She ducks around the corner, and waits, listening.

The man doesn’t move for a few minutes, but then Melissa hears his phone buzz and he picks up.

“Yeah I’m on the second floor.” he says. “We’ve got four up top and a they’re making their way down. If he’s in any of these rooms we’ll find him.”

_Crap._

Turning the other way she makes her way to the elevator.

When the doors open, she’s shocked to see Chris behind them.

She quickly brings her finger to her lips as she steps in and hits the button to bring her and Chris down down to the morgue. The second the door closes she turns on him.

“Where the _hell_ have you been?” she snaps, but there’s a serious grim look on his face as well.

“Is Scott here?” he asks urgently. “Because we _can’t_ let them find him.”

 

*     *     *

Theo continues to look at Scott unsurely.

Could Scott really mean that? After everything Theo had done to him?

He wants to believe it, but he feels sick at the thought of trusting someone. When you stab so many people in the back trust doesn't come easy.

The way Scott’s hand feels on his cheek...Theo’s not used to being touched like that. It makes his skin crawl because he knows he doesn’t deserve it, especially not from _Scott_ of all people.

But the calming feeling radiating from Scott’s skin is impossible to turn away from. It’s like a warm fire when everything around him is biting cold. Before he can stop himself he’s closing his eyes and turning his face into Scott’s palm, letting the warm comforting feeling wash over him.

For a moment he feels everything wash off him. The guilt, the loneliness, the consuming fear and emptiness that’s haunted his every step since he was a child, he’s absolved of it all for in as his melts into the touch. For a flicker of an instant he isn’t a twisted empty shell of a person or a monster in everything but name. He isn’t the rejected failure of a cruel science experiment or a broken puzzle piece that’s so deformed it no longer has anywhere it fits.

But only for a moment before the door to the morgue bursts open.

Theo jumps at the sound, and Scott’s hand slips away from his cheek.

The moment is over. The warm glowing relief leaves him as he snaps his head to the side to see two figures rushing in.

“Scott you have to get out, now!” Melissa nearly shouts with urgency. “There isn’t any time to explain but you _can’t_ let them see you.”

“Wait, what?” Scott replies, scrambling to his feet and pulling Theo up with him. “Why?”

“Did you not hear your mother when she said ‘no time to explain?’ Chris barks authoritatively back at him.

“Hey first of all,” Scott’s tone is suddenly rigid. “Don’t you talk to me like...like you’re my-”

“Scott, honey, _please_ !” Melissa implores as she grabs Scott’s wrist and tugs him forward. “ _Not now_ . Just _trust us_ on this.”

“Fine.” Scott says, but when he turns to Theo his dark brown eyes are soft again. “Are you okay? Can you walk?”

“Y-yeah.” Theo stutters, a bit taken aback by Scott’s sudden change in demeanor.

At how the soft protective tone had been reserved for _him_.

“Then let’s go.” Scott whispers and pulls him gently by the arm.

Theo’s legs are shaky, and the floor is cold underneath his feet. The warm feeling that had swept him up is gone, he’s himself again, but as he follows Scott out into the hall, he realizes something is different.

Something has changed, and he’s not sure what it is.

There’s strange and unfamiliar fluttering in his chest and it has nothing to do with the hunters or the morgue they’re leaving behind.

As they turn the corner down the next hall, he steps a little closer to Scott and the stirring grows deeper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out longer than I expected! I had a whole smutty second part in mind but alas it didn't go there in this one, so there may be a sequel. Thoughts and constructive comments are always welcome. ^_^
> 
>  **If you're looking for you next Scott x Theo read, I've written a handful fo sceo fics:**  
> [The Call](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11857773/chapters/26771910)  
> [The Road After Trilogy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14330802/chapters/33070752)  
> [What Should Have Been Ours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9862829/chapters/22131167)  
> [Adoption](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7802056%0A%20rel=)  
> ...and more ficlets and longer works-in-progress on my [works](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonzDust/works) page.


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